Zach Cregger has opened up about his upcoming Resident Evil movie in a new Empire cover story, and the biggest takeaway is that the whole thing was his idea from the start.
The Barbarian and Weapons director did not get chased into the franchise. He went after it himself.
Zach Cregger chose Resident Evil himself
After two of the most talked about horror films of the last few years, Cregger could have taken his pick of major franchises. Instead, he approached the people who control Resident Evil with his own pitch, and they let him run with it.
He is a longtime fan of the games, and he is framing the film as a personal project first and a franchise entry second. As Cregger put it to Empire, this is “a Zach Cregger movie that just happens to be a Resident Evil movie.”
That lines up with how he described the reboot when Sony dropped its first featurette, where he made clear the film is built on dread rather than action.
Austin Abrams plays an everyman ‘idiot’ in Resident Evil
The hook of Cregger’s take is the lead character. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier, and Cregger wants him to function as the audience’s way into the world.
Bryan is not a trained operative with a holster full of skills. Cregger describes him as an everyman saddled with a mission far bigger than he is, telling Empire the concept is that “we’re following an idiot.” He is quick to clarify that Bryan is not stupid, just completely out of his depth when it comes to survival.
Cregger even reaches for The Lord of the Rings to explain it, comparing Bryan’s journey to “Frodo going into Mordor.”
The everyman angle is not new for this project. Cregger previously joked that he is hopeless with guns and would miss most of his shots if he were dropped into the games, which is the exact energy he is putting into Bryan.
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is one long, non-stop horror sequence
Anyone expecting the kind of structural curveballs that defined Barbarian and Weapons may be surprised. Cregger says this film is far more straightforward, and that is by design.
He describes the movie as essentially one giant sequence that kicks off only a few minutes in and barely lets go until the credits. The plan is to push the audience from set piece to set piece, each location bringing its own threat, the same way the games run players through one deadly room after another.
That is a real shift for Cregger. His first two features earned their reputation on twisty, perspective-shifting storytelling, so a deliberately relentless, run-for-your-life structure is a different kind of swing for him.
Resident Evil release date and cast
Resident Evil stars Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser. The film is directed by Zach Cregger and written by Cregger and Shay Hatten. It hits theaters on September 18, 2026.
Empire’s full Resident Evil feature runs in its Odyssey issue, on sale July 2.
